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Open Source and IBM

Paul Murphy in his Open Solaris and strategic consequences article @ News.com made interesting comments about IBM and Linux:

I believe IBM is effectively taking over Linux, not through ownership but by influencing the influencers: manipulating the people and press involved in guiding its use, evolution and acceptance. Witness, for example, IBM's success in manipulating the press and lots of serious Linux players with regard first to the SCO lawsuit and, more recently, in the fawning attention paid its opening of 500 mostly expiring, and mostly irrelevant to open source, patents.

I think Paul Murphy is right on target. IBM is effectively pretending to be Open Source messaiah without giving out much. Open source has mainly been a weapon for IBM in markets where it has been a loser.

Just a few Examples:
IBM started supporting Linux since they realised they can never make it with Crappy AIX competing against Solaris.
IBM started Open Sourcing Eclipse when it has negligible market share.
IBM gave away 500 patents from which they can't make a single dollar. Entire press jumped on forgetting the fact that IBM is files highest number of patents every year.

How about IBM Open sourcing successful products like WebFear :-) or DB2?
posted by Kumar at 8:27 PM